“In all of my universe I have seen no law of nature, unchanging and inexorable. This universe presents only changing relationships which are sometimes seen as laws by short-lived awareness. These fleshy sensoria which we call self are ephemera withering in the blaze of infinity, fleetingly aware of temporary conditions which confine our activities and change as our activities change. If you must label the absolute, use its proper name: Temporary.”

― Leto the Second, God Emperor of Dune.

One of the things I’ve been working on lately is a magic system for a TTRPG, I’ve run aground however as I’ve having to make some choices about it, mainly does magic as practiced reflect reality or theory?

now that might sound weird but let me explain, science is a blackbox, it’s a methodology not an ideology, it makes no prescriptions, this is something I think most average people tend to ignore or forget.

Science is only concerned with models and theories, not facts or truths⌗

Which models best predict and describe things we observe or can observe, newtonian physics are still very good at describing gravity and it’s relation to bodies of mass, even if it isn’t as precise to the same degree as models which came after. Relativistic physics accounted for dead ends and discrepancies in observed reality which newtonian physics had no proper frame of reference for.

As relativistic physics assigned the substrate of existence with the property of curvature, which explained and accounted for delays and the warping of time based on gravity, it literally added another dimension to the whole view.

Models often make predictions⌗

Another thing I don’t see magic systems do is make predictions, pre-modern models chemistry made a great deal of predictions about possible elements based on possible electron counts,

Several models of particle physics predict the existence of Gravitons, or the non interactive matter we presume is dark matter, models often have implicit assumptions, when the people in these fields follow these models to their conclusions they often find the model predicts or suggests something should exist, but has yet to be verified.

There are a few magic systems that do this, but not many, and often it is more a theology prediction baked into the setting, than one purely based on internal logical derivation.

Art has the same functions⌗

There are no hard and fast rules in the art, but masters of the craft often devise rules of thumb, and pattern match their crafts for better ease of teaching others their craft.

the end purpose of Theory in art of course is not to come closer to understanding, but to make it teachable, because if it was no longer theory, it’d be a settled method, and thus not an art strictly.

There is a false dichotomy⌗

As pertains to soft and hard magic system. soft magic is considered soft because there is no hard structure behind it and as such is a much more thematic affair, while hard magic is defined by its rules and what cannot do with it.

They seem to assume science is a rigid mental construct, a whole, when in fact it is not, but a fractured and often conflicted series of sciences. And we really ought to get back to using science in it’s plural form. “The Sciences”

As well it seems to me a great deal of settings seem to have magic which is set in stone in how it interact with reality; or the magic is ill-defined but nobody really inquires further, or worse both.

Maybe the implications are explored, but it’s clear the thing explored is not a human framed understanding of the universe but simply the authors understanding of it projected into the mouths of characters.

What I purpose⌗

To make magic interesting again it should be framed from a scientific view, but a real one. Not a pop-science perspective where false consensus is projected, but rather the messy, real and often whimsical.

I frame science from an epistemology anarchy perspective, because it is and ought be that. And likewise magic framed that stance is all the more interesting as a result, it can be studied and understand, yet never so understood as to be mastered, as to be repeatable and safe in the way believe we have mastered our environment.